Joanne Jacobs summarized an article I saw earlier this week with a pretty good suggestion by Erik Hanushek for how state tests could be changed to be more relevant/useful. She asked if the idea makes sense. My comment:

Yes. My school and many others are already paying for adaptive computerized tests that we can use as universal screens. We immediately take the information from those and use them to reexamine learning goals and groupings for our students. State testing data only really has punitive value months after the test is over. If the state were to have a flexible system we could frequently use for adjustments to instruction, we wouldn’t then need to spend additional, local taxpayer money to get information we can actually use.